


Mischief Managed

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: Darcy watched for way too long while Thor and Jane danced around reconciling.Five times Darcy hoped to see Jane and Thor make up and the one time she got help to make sure it happened.





	Mischief Managed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/gifts).



**_~*~ The Break ~*~_ **

It was just shy of Darcy’s worst nightmare the day Jane and Thor decided to call it quits. The reasoning was sound. Jane had Science to do all over the planet, and Thor couldn’t just be expected to call and give a heads up that he wouldn’t be home for dinner every time Tony accidentally made a murder bot. Heroism apparently came with the steep price of surprise world saving. Still, Darcy couldn’t help but be disappointed that her friends were splitting. They were just so perfect together!

At first she genuinely thought that it wouldn’t last long. After all, there wasn’t any yelling. It was just a quiet, sad conversation on the balcony of their hotel room in Rio that Darcy was absolutely not eavesdropping on. 

Thor was invited to spend the rest of their week in Brazil with them, and he agreed to at least hang around for a day or two. He and Jane were perfectly friendly, just no longer sharing a bed or doing their cutesy casual affection thing. As sure as Darcy was that they’d end up at it like rabbits and back together in a matter of days, when it was time to leave Brazil Thor just smiled sadly, hugged them both, and made his way back to New York to help the other Avengers finish cleaning up the Ultron mess.

**_~*~ Upstate ~*~_ **

When the Ultron clean-up was complete, Thor sent word to Darcy and Jane to meet him at the new Avengers facility in upstate New York. To say goodbye. At least, that’s what his e-mail had said. Neither of them could quite figure out how he’d managed to secure an e-mail address. The betting pool was split evenly between him dictating to some poor administrative assistant (Darcy) and either Tony or Pepper sending it on his behalf (Jane). The truth, it turned out, was that Maria Hill had made the suggestion that they be invited when he’d decided to leave the planet and had sent the message herself when Thor agreed.

Darcy was thrilled. She was sure that Thor’s desire to see them before he left was a sign that his feelings for Jane were still something altogether more than just friendly. Plus, for all that the astrophysicist claimed she was doing just fine, Darcy knew she was missing her love. It was in the way she wouldn’t look at a certain set of stars—ones she’d gazed at with Thor in New Mexico—and the way she stopped eating certain flavors of pop tarts. She was sure Thor felt the same way. Her soft-hearted thunder-bro was the type to give up hope hard.

The bittersweet goodbye was not the dramatic romantic moment Darcy was hoping for. Thor seemed genuinely sorry to be leaving, but when he talking about the Aether and the other Infinity Stones his reason for going really couldn’t be argued with. Out of all the Avengers, he was the only one with the ability to galavant about the universe and hunt for information. Jane nodded along with his explanation like it made perfect sense, wished him the best of luck, and offered her services should he ever need the type of help that a lowly astrophysicist could provide. Thor thanked her so formally that Darcy’s eye started twitching.

**_~*~ Grief ~*~_ **

At half past three in the morning nearly two years after Thor left Earth, Darcy’s laptop booted up of its own accord. The sticker-covered purple notebook was sitting open but off on a lab table for the better part of the night while its owner ran back and forth between instruments at Jane’s behest. They were installed on a semi-permanent basis in the Avengers facility making use of virtually limitless funds and an impressive protection racket, so tech occasionally doing weird things wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. Tech doing weird things and then presenting them with the moving face of a certain god of mischief they’d believed to be dead, however, was cause for alarm.

With the help of Heimdall’s unerring sight and a few of the surviving Asgardian scholars, Loki had managed to set up a line of communication between Darcy’s laptop and the ship they were on. In short order, a newly shorn and one-eyed Thor explained to the two women about Loki’s faked death, Hela, and the complete destruction of Asgard. They had survivors and a ship, but because there were so many injured they couldn’t risk the succession of hyperspace jumps necessary to make the trip quickly. It was going to take them almost two months to make the journey. Darcy took a step back while Jane and Thor continued the conversation, her poli-sci mind already kicking into overdrive for how to help establish a place for the Asgardians to be refugees on Earth. 

Of course, her mind was also going into overdrive on other fronts. Thor had lost his father, his friends, and his home in very short order. Grief was a powerful motivator, and he’d already shown that he still had attachment by making Jane his first person to contact. It might just be the right time for a reconciliation.

It didn’t happen, though. Darcy blamed long distance logistics and the immediate Science! bender Jane went on trying to find ways to speed up the Statesman’s journey. It was a good sign, though, that the first thing Jane asked when they hung up the call was for Darcy to cancel the date she’d been set to go on that week— more specifically to cancel it and let the poor sap know that she wouldn’t be rescheduling. Even more promising was the second call Darcy received on her laptop after she’d retreated to her room for a few hours of rest. 

Loki, it seemed, had quite liked Jane as a paramour for his big brother. He thought it was such a shame that they’d split. He was very interested in seeing the split rectified.

Darcy had an ally.

**_~*~ Thanos ~*~_ **

Darcy and Jane had been in the middle of their weekly check-in call with Thor about a month into his travel when the big guy let them know that a massive unfriendly ship was approaching. Now, the king of Asgard was aware that his ex and adopted little sister had been in near-constant contact with his people’s lifeboat while they trekked across the galaxy toward Earth. He’d approved the sharing of knowledge between the two parties in the hopes that it would help pave the way for the survivors to seek asylum on the little blue planet. He was not, however, aware that Jane, Loki, Darcy, and a pack of Asgardian scholars had been cobbling together an array of devices worthy of science fiction from the scraps available on The Statesman and the Tesseract that Loki maybe still hadn’t told his brother he’d stolen. 

It was amazing how easily a determined, angry astrophysicist who’d spent the past few years of her career on the development of portal technology could royally piss off a genocidal maniac. Thanos and his military might had clearly been expecting to board the Asgardian refugee ship, murder at least half of its inhabitants, and threaten the survivors until they acquired the glowing blue cube Loki’d promised to deliver so long ago. There were probably plans for torture. Someone would make a terrible speech about how it was all for ‘the good of the universe’ or something to that general effect. It would all be quite dramatic.

What actually happened was this:

Thanos’ ship opened a channel to declare the intent to board. On the communication monitors, Thor stood proud and majestic just as a king should. Then, Loki appeared at his brother’s side. He raised both middle fingers and rattled off a series of pithy insults that he and Darcy had concocted while long distance drinking together a few nights previous. The Statesman was briefly enveloped in a shimmering aurora of rainbow light.

And then it winked out of existence.

Left floating in space just where The Statesman had been was a bulk sized box of iced strawberry pop tarts. A note was scribbled on the box’s surface in silver sharpie. It read “Physics FTW! Fuck you, Grimace!” The i’s were dotted with hearts.

On the other side of the galaxy, a ship full of mostly confused Asgardians winked into being just to the left of Jupiter. 

Jane and Darcy were waiting when the Statesman reached Earth, ready to welcome the refugees and their friends back home. There were tears, and Thor looked all kinds of rugged with his haircut and his eyepatch. Darcy waited with baited breath for he and Jane to have a heart-stoppingly beautiful reunion. Surely after all this time they would see one another, embrace, and realize that they were damn well meant to be. Loki materialized at her side at some point in all the hullabaloo, sharing in hushed whispers his own theories about how much his brother had been pining for Jane.

_They._

_Didn’t._

_Even._

_Hug._

**_~*~ Victory ~*~_ **

Thanos, of course, didn’t exactly give up because a ship he was stalking got replaced with a box of pop tarts decorated with rude messages. No, he rolled up on Earth with his armies and his “children” ready to rumble like it was West Side Story. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on Thor getting in touch with the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Guardians rounding up what was left of the Nova Corps. With Xandar being a floating mass of space debris, the Nova Corps were understandably upset, and the Guardians had pretty much been on the “get Thanos” train since they’d gotten together. Then, of course, there was the killer blonde Ronan the Accuser had been obsessed with capturing who showed up ready to brawl thanks to a very outdated pager and a one-eyed cat lover finally admitting that he couldn’t handle the problem coming at him. The Mad Titan found himself trapped between a desperate army, a woman made of pure power, and an Earth that had been preparing for his arrival since Asgard came to call. 

The fight didn’t last long, to say the very least.

The victory party King T’Challa threw in Wakanda lasted a great deal longer. 

At the behest of literally everyone involved (an insistence backed up by more power than any world leader wanted to argue with), all the politicking was set aside for a week to celebrate what had basically been a diverted apocalypse. Feasting, music, and dancing spanning a myriad of cultures were on display for days on end. No longer separated by vast distance, Darcy and Loki chatted amongst themselves as they kept their eyes trained on their favorite couple, searching for any sign that their ship was going to sail.

“I just don’t understand it,” Darcy hissed in frustration. She and Loki had taken to the dance floor in order to have a cover for their vigilant watch. “They should at the very least be talking to one another.”

“Yes, but all they seem to be doing instead is stealing glances and pretending to ignore one another.” Loki steered them both in a circle, giving her a chance to watch Thor over his shoulder while he kept Jane in his periphery. 

Darcy thumped her head against his shoulder, sighing in disgust. “I swear, they’re worse than kids in school. All they need is for one of them to be tugging on the other’s pigtails.” She straightened back up, shaking her hair back away from her face.

“Well, I guess there’s only one thing to be done for it.” He sounded smug, his voice dripping with mischief.

“What’s that, smarty-pants?”

“Perhaps,” Loki mused, turning her under one arm to keep up the image that they were just enjoying a dance rather than watching Thor and Jane like hawks, “it’s time we took a more direct approach.”

**_~*~ The Closet ~*~_ **

It could only really be called a closet if what it was storing were clothes for the Hulk. The room was actually quite spacious, even when you stuffed the King of Asgard and a tiny ball of angry scientist inside. There were, however, no windows and only one door that remained firmly locked. It was virtually empty otherwise, sporting nothing more than a big metal crate, a full water cooler, and an industrial sized box of pop tarts in Thor’s favorite flavor. Well, nothing more than all of that and the speakers, microphones, and surveillance cameras in every corner. When Tony Stark joined a matchmaking party—even as an invisible party that refused to be directly involved—he did not skimp on the equipment.

On the monitors in Darcy’s office at the Avengers facility, she and Loki watched while Thor paced the room like a caged animal. Jane was mad enough to stress eat and was tearing open one of the pop tart boxes like a frenzied terrier. They’d been locked in for just over seven minutes as told by the running clock F.R.I.D.A.Y. had started the moment the door of the room slammed shut behind its occupants. All according to plan. 

Loki and Darcy took turns with the microphone that broadcast into the room. Darcy laid out in excruciating detail every action of pining that Jane had taken since the break-up. She left nothing ambiguous, from desperate-to-forget-him dating attempts to pop tart strikes. In contrast, Loki was almost annoyingly vague. All he pointed out was that Thor talked in his sleep, and the one thing the King was always repeating was Jane’s name in a sickeningly lovesick tone.

After that it took less than an hour before the pair haltingly admitted to their lingering feelings. From admission it was only another three minutes before they were making out like teenagers with Jane perched on top of the crate. As planned, the facility’s A.I. shut off the cameras the moment things escalated past the PG-13 line. 

“Mischief managed!” Darcy crowed with glee, throwing a hand up to give Loki a high-five. He frowned at the reference, but slapped his palm against hers anyway.

“Was that a pop culture reference?” he asked. “I feel like I’m meant to recognize it, but I can’t recall what it’s from.”

Darcy looped her arm through his, turning them both away from the monitors as she set off further into the facility. “You should absolutely recognize it, my dude. Don’t worry. We’ll fix it.” She was bouncing on her heels as they made their way through the halls. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., could you please alert everyone on the movie list that we’re doing a Potter marathon in the big theater commons?”


End file.
